The Making of Biblical Womanhood

Contents Acknowledgments viii Introduction 1 1. The Beginning of Patriarchy 11 2. What If Biblical Womanhood Doesn’t Come from Paul? 39 3. Our Selective Medieval Memory 71 4. The Cost of the Reformation for Evangelical Women 101 5. Writing Women Out of the English Bible 129 6. Sanctifying Subordination 151 7. Making Biblical Womanhood Gospel Truth 173 8. Isn’t It Time to Set Women Free? 201 Notes 219 Author Bio 245 vii _Barr_BiblicalWomanhood_MB_jck.indd 7 12/18/20 11:53 AM TWO What from Doesn’t Come Paul? Womanhood If Biblical “I HATE PAUL!” I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that from my students, mostly young women scarred by how Paul has been used against them as they have been told to be silent (1 Corinthians 14), to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5), not to teach or exercise authority over men (1 Timothy 2), and to be workers at home (Titus 2). They have been taught that God designed women to follow male headship (1 Corinthians 11), focusing on family and home (Colossians 3; 1 Peter 3), and that occupations other than family should be secondary for women, mostly undertaken out of necessity or after their children have left the house. A few years ago, a student came to my office ostensibly to discuss her class paper, but it soon became clear that what she really wanted to discuss was her vocation. She asked me: Did God call you to be a professor as well as a mom and a pastor’s wife? Was it hard? Did you feel guilty about working outside the home? Was your husband sup- portive? What did people in your church think? She shared her frustrations as a career-minded Christian woman from a conservative background who was trying to reconcile church and family expectations with her vocational calling. A recent conversation with her father had exasperated her. Anxious about her major, she had asked him for advice. He tried to soothe her fears, suggesting her major didn’t matter that much since she would just get married and not work anyway. Shocked, she retorted, “Dad, are you really sending me to four years of college for me to never use my degree?” 39 _Barr_BiblicalWomanhood_MB_jck.indd 49 12/18/20 11:53 AM The Making of Biblical Womanhood The father’s attitude toward women working outside the home isn’t anomalous. As we have seen, a 2017 Barna study found that while Americans in general are becoming more comfortable with women in leadership roles and more understanding of the significant obstacles women face in the work- place, evangelical Christians lag behind.1 Perhaps the most star- tling gap in evangelical attitudes concerns women in specific leadership roles. I commented in 2016 that Wayne Grudem’s attitude toward women— that they should never be in authority over men— made it impossible for him to support a female candidate for president.2 The Barna study suggests I was right about this. The white evangelical leaders like Grudem who ral- lied to support Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency corre- spond to the lowest levels of comfort with a female president. For at least some evangelical and Republican voters (27–35 percent), the problem with Hillary Clinton wasn’t just that she is a Democrat; it was also that she is a woman (27 percent of evangelical voters and 35 percent of Republican voters said they were uncomfortable with a female president).3 Three years later I wasn’t surprised to see Elizabeth Warren’s bid for presidency fall beneath the same gendered hatchet. Ideas matter. These evangelical beliefs—why they argue for the immutability of female submission— are rooted in how they interpret Paul. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Woman- hood may start with Genesis 2 in their overview of complemen- tarianism, but their reading of this creation narrative stems from 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2.4 Paul frames every aspect of complementarian teachings. Evangelicals read Pauline texts as designating permanent and divinely ordained role distinctions between the sexes. Men wield authority that women cannot. Men lead, women follow. Paul tells us so. 40 _Barr_BiblicalWomanhood_MB_jck.indd 50 12/18/20 11:53 AM What If Biblical Womanhood Doesn’t Come from Paul? Is it any wonder my students hate Paul? But what if we have been reading Paul wrong? Early during our youth ministry years, my husband and I took a group of kids to a weekend evangelism conference. One of the speakers revealed his secret evangelism weapon— the question “What if you’re wrong?” I don’t remember much from that conference, but this question has stuck with me. I have found it useful in my work as a historian— what if I am wrong about my conclusions? Am I willing to reconsider the evidence? I have found it useful as a teacher, especially when a student presents me with a differ- ent idea. The question “What if I’m wrong?” helps me listen to others better. It keeps me humble. It makes me a better scholar. So here is my question for complementarian evangelicals: What if you are wrong? What if evangelicals have been understanding Paul through the lens of modern culture instead of the way Paul intended to be understood? The evangelical church fears that recognizing women’s leadership will mean bowing to cultural peer pressure. But what if the church is bowing to cultural peer pressure by denying women’s leadership? What if, instead of a “plain and natural” reading, our interpretation of Paul— and subsequent exclusion of women from leadership roles—results from succumbing to the attitudes and patterns of thinking around us? Christians in the past may have used Paul to exclude women from leadership, but this doesn’t mean that the subjugation of women is biblical. It just means that Christians today are repeating the same mistake of Christians in the past— modeling our treatment of women after the world around us instead of the world Jesus shows us is possible. So when my students exclaim that they “hate Paul,” I counter: it isn’t Paul they hate; rather, they hate how Paul’s letters have become foundational to an understanding of biblical gender 41 _Barr_BiblicalWomanhood_MB_jck.indd 51 12/18/20 11:53 AM The Making of Biblical Womanhood roles that oppress women. Beverly Roberts Gaventa, a leading Pauline scholar, laments that evangelicals have spent so much time “parsing the lines of Paul’s letters for theological proposi- tions and ethical guidelines that must be replicated narrowly” that we have missed Paul’s bigger purpose. We have reduced his call for oneness into patrolling borders for uniformity; we have traded the “radical character” of Christ’s body for a rigid hierarchy of gender and power. Instead of “thinking along with Paul,” as Gaventa appeals, evangelicals have turned Paul into a weapon for our own culture wars.5 New Testament scholar Boykin Sanders proclaims that it is time to get Paul right when it comes to women. In bold type under the heading “Neither Male nor Female,” he argues, “The lesson for the black church here is that gender discrimination in the work of the church is unacceptable.” Paul shows us that gender discrimination is “a return to the ways of the world,” and we are called into the “new world of the Christ- crucified gospel.”6 The truth— the evangelical reality—is that we have focused so much on adapting Paul to be like us that we have forgotten to adapt ourselves to what Paul is calling us to be: one in Christ.7 Instead of choosing the better part and embracing the “new world of the Christ- crucified gospel,” we have chosen to keep doing what humans have always done: building our own tower of hierarchy and power. Because We Can Read Paul Differently A medieval priest penned my favorite marriage sermon. Not many people know his name, although Dorothy L. Sayers stole my heart by quoting him in her classic murder mystery The Nine Tailors (another favorite of mine). His name was John 42 _Barr_BiblicalWomanhood_MB_jck.indd 52 12/18/20 11:53 AM What If Biblical Womanhood Doesn’t Come from Paul? Mirk, and he lived in West England during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. His sermon collection, Festial, became popular in England— so popular, in fact, that the first set of official Protestant homilies in 1547 was written, in part, to counter its influence. We have evidence that Festial sermons were printed until the eve of the Reformation and that, despite its Catholic doctrine, Festial continued to be preached through- out the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.8 Listen to how this Festial sermon describes the marriage relationship between husband and wife: “Thus, by God’s com- mand, a man shall take on a wife of like age, like condition, and like birth.” The text continues, “For this a man shall leave father and mother and draw to her as a part of himself, and she shall love him and he her, truly together, and they shall be two in one flesh.”9 Rather than hierarchy, the sermon stresses how the man and woman shall love “truly together” and become “one flesh.” When the priest blesses the woman’s ring, he declares that it “represents God who has neither a beginning nor ending, and puts it on her finger that has a vein running to her heart, showing that she shall love God over all things and then her husband.”10 The ring proclaims that a wife’s allegiance belongs first to God and second to her husband.

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